


Nature

by kittylovesbambi



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 08:31:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15139196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittylovesbambi/pseuds/kittylovesbambi
Summary: Changmin brings home a boy, or at least he thinks he did.





	Nature

**Author's Note:**

> The type of relationship between the villagers and nature in this story is known as animism (explained a little in the first paragraph). Setting is inspired by the Sundarbans.

In a small rural area in Korea, lies a village threatened by tigers. The tigers living here aren’t your usual tigers that generally try to avoid people. No, these tigers are especially vicious, going out of their way to hunt for and eat humans. But the villagers understand and respect them, for they see themselves as part of nature, part of the food chain. The tigers are just trying to survive, and to survive they need to hunt, just as humans hunt other animals to survive.

* * *

“I’m going to go pick some berries, bye!” Changmin shouts, sprinting from the house with a handwoven basket slung on his arm.

His parents are arguing again, this time over his father’s habit of leaving cups all over the house. He quickly conjured up an excuse to be excluded from the argument, afraid that he would be dragged into it yet again.

The previous time his mother tried to get him to back her up, his father started interrogating him and quite frankly he wasn’t too comfortable with telling his father that he was kind of a slob, so he just kept quiet and that got his mother upset with him for not siding with her.

He’s not stupid enough to get embroiled in something similar again.

He stops running once his parents’ voices tapered off completely, and slowly strolls to the forest, careful to take all the time he can just in case the argument goes on for an extra long time.

The berry bushes are located right on the outskirts of the forest, which is inhabited by the tigers. Although he is generally safe as long as he doesn’t go into the forest, he was careful to wear dark coloured clothing for camouflage. Stealthily, he bends down and picks off the gleaming blue and red beads from the branches, taking care not to rustle the leaves.

He is almost done with his second bush when he hears, a thud, followed by a grunt.

From inside the forest.

Curiosity kills the cat, his mind warns, but he sticks the top of his head out from under the bush anyway, and squints.

Not too far inside the forest, he can see a flash of bright orange and light brown amidst the thick greens, the colours rolling back and forth as he hears more tussling and a branch snapping. When the brown figure comes up on top, Changmin spots the face of a young boy for a brief moment before he goes down again.

His heart stops.

It’s a tiger, he realises, panicking, attacking a boy.

Every fibre of his being tells him to run, run while the tiger is distracted. But he has seen how young the boy is, possibly a little older than he is but still, that boy could have been him.

His mind defies instinct, and pushes him up to his feet. Before he can regret anything, he grabs the thickest and largest branch he spots, and runs forth with his eyes shut tight, afraid of seeing blood and the impending attack of the ferocious beast, screaming and swinging the branch madly.

“Go! Go!” He hears, right before the other end of his branch comes into contact with something, and the receiver of the hit grunts and whines.

That’s not right.

He hesitates for a second, and peers through the crack of his eyelids, and spots no orange, only a naked boy lying on the forest floor in a fetal position, seemingly unharmed except that his arms are hugging his mid-torso.

Concern overriding confusion, Changmin stumbles forward and kneels next to the figure, gently touching the boy on the shoulder before quickly pulling back as the boy flinches hard, shrinking into a tighter ball on the floor.

“I’m so-sorry,” Changmin whimpers, tears filling his eyes. “I didn’t mean to hit you I- I just- I thought you were attacked by a tiger and-“

Changmin feels terrible, terrible for hurting the boy and terrible for being stupid for probably mistaking the presence of a tiger, because there was no way a fearsome tiger would run away at the sight of someone as thin and frail as him and neither would it have left the boy completely unscathed. He blurts out incoherent apologies and “are you okay”s through a curtain of tears as he grasps his knees tightly, still kneeling, head bowed.

The worst of the pain subsides and the boy looks up at the teary face flooded with guilt, and quickly pushes himself up to his knees as well, wincing slightly at the stab of pain in his side at the sudden movement.

“No no no,” The boy says with a thick accent colouring his voice, words heavy and tumbling. He gathers Changmin's wrists together easily with his larger hand, and uses his other hand to wipe the tears off his face.

“Cry not, I okay!” Words falling out of his mouth in staccato and his brows furrows as his brain whirls wildly, trying to gather the words into a sensible sentence. He hits his chest to prove his point, biting his lips to stop himself from wincing. And he adds in a softer voice, placing a hand under Changmin’s chin, raising his face and meets his eyes, “You no blame.”

Changmin’s sobbing reduces into hiccups at the consolation, but his bottom lip still shakes uncontrollably when he sees the pain behind the forced smile on the boy’s face.

He feels a sudden surge of responsibility, wiping his tears away with aggressive swipes with his forearm, and sniffles loudly to get rid of the mucus in his nose. His little fingers wrap around the hand that was previously holding them and he asks for the address of the boy, determined to send him home safely.

The boy blinks, startled at the question and at a loss of how to answer. He gapes like a fish out of water at the floor, licking his lips over and over and Changmin can almost hear the whirring of his brain trying to conjure up an answer.

“I… no… home?” The boy finally stutters out, a little unconvincingly, with an awkward smile that obviously translated to “please believe this lie”.

But Changmin’s guilt revisits and floods out common sense, immediately pitying the boy and mentally screaming at himself for hurting a boy who doesn’t even have a family or a proper shelter to live under.

He swallows the tears that threaten to prickle his eyes again, and gets on his feet, helping the boy up along as well.

“You can go home with me then,” He mumbles, determination evident despite the sniffling. “You can sleep in my bed till you’re better and I’ll give you my food.”

They take two steps before awareness suddenly floods Changmin’s eyes, and he adds a softer, “Some of my food.”

Changmin takes this mission seriously, brows furrowed and bottom lip sticking out in concentration as he helps the boy walk back to his home slowly, his eyes stubbornly glued on the floor in front of them, careful not to let the boy step on or trip on anything else.

He doesn’t notice a pair sparkling night black eyes behind them.

He also doesn’t notice the boy looking back at them and shaking his head minutely.

The tiger leaves them alone.

* * *

To his relief, his parents welcome the boy warmly, cooing over him and apologising on Changmin’s behalf as said boy blushes heavily.

They try to get him dressed and into bed, quickly grabbing some clothes from Changmin’s closet to cover him up with. But Changmin’s clothes are too small for him, the boy is taller, shoulder broader and more well filled out than an average child’s. So for the time being, he wears the too large shirt of Changmin’s father, the end of the shirt hanging past the knee like a dress, coupled with Changmin’s long pants.

Changmin's mother coos over how adorable he looks.

“I’ll make you something that’s more fitting my dear. In the meantime, you can sleep here and Changmin will sleep with us,” She assures him as she places him on Changmin’s bed and covers him with a blanket. She has been making sure to speak slowly since she realised he wasn’t proficient in their dialect. “You take a rest now, I’ll get Changmin to bring in dinner once I’m done with it.”

The boy still looks rather confused, eyes wide and alert until Changmin’s mum leaves the room, seemingly trying to catch any order she may still want to give even though he has trouble understanding them.

It is only when the straw curtain falls back down and he senses no other person approaching the room, that he closes his eyes and falls into deep sleep.

* * *

When dinner comes, the boy eats all the meat and passes the remaining rice and vegetables back to Changmin with a sheepish smile and a mumbled, “sorry”.

* * *

Changmin learns that his name is Yunho, and that he’s fourteen, just two years older than him. Other than that, Changmin learns nothing much else of his history. It seems as if he is having amnesia of some sort, always looking flustered whenever Changmin tries to ask about his past. Yunho will press his lips together and look at everywhere else except at Changmin’s face, and blubber something out with a huge question mark at the end of it, as if he was unsure of the answer himself.

Eventually, Changmin gives up and they talk about other things.

Yunho loves talking. He thinks of the world in colours, everything and everyone fascinates him in one way or another and he would conjure up the most random and bizarre theories or ideas. He bombards Changmin with questions, some absurd and some so intelligent Changmin doesn't know how to answer.

On the other hand, Changmin himself is a listener, and he never gets bored listening to Yunho. Every story he hears is like a breath of fresh air, a new perspective that he has never heard before. Every time Yunho forgets a word (which is a lot of times), he starts gesticulating wildly, which always amuses him.

Once he hopped around on all fours for a full ten minutes while trying to depict a grasshopper, and Changmin was too busy laughing his ass off at the enthusiastic hopping and confusion in Yunho’s face to tell him the word he was looking for, even though he had figured it out by the second minute of the other’s boy mad hopping.

Changmin, admittingly short-tempered, found himself enjoying teaching Yunho their dialect. Whenever Yunho manages to get the pronunciation right or manages to recall a word that Changmin previously taught only once or twice without any prompt, pride swells uncontrollably in Changmin’s chest. Even his mother has pointed out how affectionate he is when he teaches and explains things to Yunho, to which Changmin just vehemently denied by wrinkling his nose and stomping off.

To find Yunho.

But his mother didn’t need to know that.

His mother lets out a knowing chuckle anyway.

* * *

A week in, his best friends Kyuhyun and Minho pays him a visit, initially worried that he had fallen ill or something because he has not been seeking them out. They then throw a bread at Changmin’s head when they saw him with Yunho sitting by the creek laughing uncontrollably as the other boy parroted the call of some bird they heard earlier.

“We thought you were sick but you actually just decided to abandon us because you found a boyfriend?” Kyuhyun pouts angrily, chubby little arms akimbo. “Ya Shim Changmin, how could you do that to us!”

Changmin throws the bread back at Kyuhyun and loudly denies the accusations, all while staring at some blade of grass on the ground as he feels his face heat up.

He blushes even harder when Yunho asks, “What’s a boyfriend, Changminnie? Am I your boyfriend?”

Kyuhyun and Minho exchange glances and smirk when Changmin's only answer is the reddening of his ears.

Because they take their job as Changmin’s best friends very seriously, they immediately start dancing around obnoxiously and shout “Changmin has a boyfriend!” while laughing at their friend sputter about trying to shut them up while avoiding Yunho’s constant questions of boyfriends and “why are your ears so red, Changminnie?” and “how did they become even redder, Changminnie?”.

Eventually, after a lot of chasing and way too much blood in Changmin's ears, they settle down to get to know one another. Yunho is initially a little nervous, Changmin can tell by the way he fidgets, so Changmin sits close beside him, knees touching, and constantly looks at Yunho to let him know that he can always look his way if he needed some support.

But thankfully, Yunho is a natural at socialising, so Changmin didn’t need to interject or do that awkward thing that people had to do when introducing their friends to one another. Slowly but surely, the conversation takes off by itself and the four boys spent the entire afternoon by the creek, just fooling around and chatting till the sky turned amber.

Before they part, Kyuhyun winks and does finger guns at Changmin.

_I approve._

* * *

A week and a half in, Changmin notices Yunho’s weight loss.

His parents and himself have been trying so hard to get Yunho to be less picky about food, because it isn’t as if his family can afford to eat meat for every meal.

One morning, Changmin wakes up and notices how Yunho’s cheekbones stick out and how the new shirt that his mother tailored for Yunho just ten days ago hangs off his frame.

Changmin loses his patience.

“Why are you so picky!” Changmin fumes, his parents startled and Yunho almost cowers. “Do you think we’re rich? We can’t feed you meat all the time! You’re absolutely ridiculous.”

Changmin slams his chopsticks against the table and stomps out, angry, and worried.

He sits at their doorstep and breathes heavily, tears filling his eyes as he wipes them away angrily. He knows that he shouldn’t have lost his temper like that. Although he cannot understand why Yunho refuses to eat anything but meat, he knows that it must be because of _some_ reason, because the Yunho he knows will never deliberately make anyone's life difficult. He feels bad for guilt tripping Yunho that way.

Suddenly, the straw curtain behind him rustles, and Yunho runs out. He sits himself down next to Changmin, an empty bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other, with his mouth still full of half eaten rice and vegetables. He chews roughly and swallows the entire mouthful.

“I’m sorry, Changminnie. Please forgive me?”

* * *

Yunho eats everything in his bowl from then on.

No one suspects a thing when Yunho excuses himself to use the toilet after every meal.

He always returns to the table with his face a tone paler and the taste of acid staining his tongue.

* * *

Changmin is still worried, because Yunho, despite eating everything now, is still losing weight and getting gaunter every day.

But before he knows it, Changmin returns to school.

Taking a renewed interest in language from teaching a certain someone, he spends extra time in school reading all the language books in the meagre library and waddles up to the teacher’s office after class to ask questions way beyond the syllabus. When his teacher notices and asks him about it, he takes the opportunity to introduce Yunho and gains permission to bring him into the school library after school hours.

They spend late afternoons studying together in the library, Changmin doing his homework and Yunho flipping through picture books and practicing forming sentences. But Yunho’s attention span is apparently terrible because every ten minutes, he’ll start bumping knees with Changmin. When Changmin doesn’t respond, he straight up boops his nose with his finger, and meets Changmin’s glare and flaming red ears with his head resting on his hands, and a pout so fierce his eyebrows furrow naturally.

Changmin hates it when Yunho does that because he can feel his own glare dying and his ears singeing off his face.

During one of these afternoons, when Changmin decides that he should entertain Yunho before he falls off the chair from fidgeting, he asks Yunho about what he has been doing when he was in school. But Yunho starts getting all flustered, hemming and hawing and eventually meeting the question with some vague answer. Changmin narrows his eyes suspiciously but doesn’t probe any further.

Because he’s in a good mood lately.

Yunho is finally putting some weight back on.

* * *

News about livestock disappearing spread around the village.

People guess it’s the tigers.

* * *

By the time Yunho recovers his healthy glow, Changmin’s father finally finished weaving an additional straw mattress for him and places it in Changmin’s room.

As it turns out, Changmin finds out that Yunho is even more active in the night than in the day, something he thought would have been impossible.

Though Yunho has never stopped surprising him since day one.

Lying on their sides and facing each other, Yunho shares with Changmin the great plans he have to improve the village. He wants to invent something that brings water straight to their house, he says, eyes shining like stars in the darkness. He wants to make life easier for everyone, for the baker’s daughter who always gives him an extra loaf of bread, for the teacher in the library who always smiles at him when he greets her.

“People are just so nice, Changminnie,” he smiles. “I want to do as much as I can for them.”

Changmin feels his heart warm, he will never cease to be amazed by how big Yunho’s heart is. Changmin isn’t a dreamer himself, he simply adapts and survives, satisfied with status quo. He just wants to find happiness in life as it is.

But Yunho is different, while he is always happy and satisfied, he always seeks change, not for himself, but for the happiness of others. Changmin thinks it’s amazing, how someone can love everyone else so much, how a foreigner can dream more for the village than the villagers themselves.

It makes him dream, dream about achieving Yunho's dreams alongside him. He wants to help Yunho achieve his dreams, he realises, and he will do anything for that to happen.

So every night, they push their mattresses together. Despite having more than enough space for them to spread out, they mostly lie shoulder to shoulder, or on their sides with their faces inches from each other. They stay up talking, Yunho ideating and Changmin critiquing and offering suggestions on how to better adapt and implement the plans.

It may seem rather futile, for a discussion of such grand scale to occur between two children. But Changmin knows he’s smart, smarter than most others in the village, and he does all within his means to keep himself informed. And he knows that Yunho is special, indispensable, he thinks the world of him.

One night when the moon is full and the darkness of the room is stolen away by the moonlight, Changmin looks at Yunho, talking animatedly about the water filtration system that they read about in the library that afternoon, and sees how the light paints pearl on his skin, highlighting the curve of his cheekbone and the outline of his chin. He sees the sparkle in his eyes, like little sources of light themselves, burning bright with hopes and dreams of the future.

Their future.

Changmin unconsciously moves a hand to cup Yunho’s cheek, and senses him freeze, sees his eyes widen.

Interpreting it as rejection, Changmin holds his breath and tries to ignore the tears threatening to well up. He presses his lips together, feels them tremble, and starts to move his hand away.

Yunho immediately moves, placing his own hand over Changmin’s, laces them together. He slides his other hand to the back of Changmin’s neck, resting his thumb on his ear.

He strokes his ear and smiles, Changmin sees overflowing affection, gratitude, and a promise.

Both move forward simultaneously, heads tilted, lips touching.

_Together?_

_Always._

* * *

That night, and many nights after, Yunho doesn’t sneak off in the middle of the night to go to the forest like all the nights before.

* * *

It is inevitable, it always happens.

The entire village gathers around the corpse of a girl, shredded and bloody and gruesome. Her intestines fell out of her cavity and her face was ripped beyond recognition.

Another tiger attack.

The baker and his wife are kneeling next to the body, wailing and grieving, she was their only daughter.

Yunho stands next to Changmin, face ashen. His grip on Changmin’s hand is almost unbearably painful, but Changmin says nothing because he remembers how fond Yunho was of her.

At the burial, they pay their respects and Yunho bows all the way to the floor. He keeps his forehead touching the ground for a good amount of time, perhaps saying prayers of some sort as he mutters words no one else can hear, shoulders shaking and fists balled tight.

At night, when they're in the privacy of their room and the comfort of the dark, Changmin half expects Yunho to cry, sincerely wants him to cry.

“I won’t be able to see you, I promise,” Changmin coaxes, lies, holding Yunho’s lax hand in his and using the other hand to caress his cheek, hoping the contact is some sort of comfort. “It’s so dark I can’t see a thing.”

But Yunho’s eyes stay dry as he stays silent, eyes focused on a spot on the wall behind Changmin.

They stay like that for a while, and Changmin almost cries with relief when Yunho opens his mouth for the first time since the burial.

“Do you blame the tiger?”

“No,” Changmin replies, taken aback at the unexpected question, but continues anyway, wanting nothing else but to get Yunho talking again. “It is fate that this happened. It’s just life, tragedies are part of it.”

Yunho stays silent again, completely unmoving as if Changmin hasn't spoken.

Changmin feels his heart tear and tears brimming, when Yunho slowly, finally, turns his head and looks at Changmin straight in the eyes.

“Would you ever love a tiger?” His voice is less than a whisper, spoken as if he is afraid, his pupils shaking as they move search Changmin’s face, looking for an answer, desperately hoping for one answer.

“No,” Changmin breathes, even softer than Yunho had asked the question. He just speaks with honesty, but he isn’t sure why he feels downright terrible right after the word has left his mouth.

Yunho’s face crumples.

He finally cries.

* * *

Changmin wakes up to Yunho crying in his embrace, eyes still shut tight and asleep, his clasped hands pressing to his forehead like in a prayer.

_I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry._

* * *

_2 years later_

Siwon runs into the club room with the latest issue of the Korean Chronicles in his hands, out of breath and seemingly in a panic. Hunched over and resting his palms on his knees, he speaks before his lungs can even get a taste of sweet oxygen.

“Tigers… government… ha… develop…”

Yunho quickly steps forth and takes the paper from Siwon, rests the other hand on Siwons back, stroking his back in gentle circles, and reads the headline printed in bold black font.

His grip on the paper tightens and it crumples.

And Changmin is immediately by his side, hand on the small of his back. He spares a glance at Yunho's face which is frozen in shock, before turning to the newspaper.

The government is planning to develop the forest. They are going to send people in to clear it in two weeks, and big beautiful skyscrapers are going to be in its place.

The article mentions nothing of the wildlife and biodiversity that will be lost.

Not one word about the tigers.

“We can’t let this happen,” Changmin grits out, furious, words barely beyond a whisper. But in the dead silence of the room, it is the loudest declaration. “How dare they, after all this time.”

His eyes sweeps the room and sees the fury simmering in the eyes of every one of their members.

Except Yunho’s.

Changmin presses on, hand automatically rubbing comforting circles on Yunho's back, “They can’t touch what is ours. That forest has protected us and provided us with so much. It’s our livelihood. If they take it away, it’s only a matter of time before they chase us away.”

Minho slams the table and jumps to his feet, his fists tight and shaking.

“They can’t take away our home! We grew up here!”

Affirmations are echoed throughout the room, some silent, some loud.

Changmin turns to Yunho again, concerned when the boy remains uncharacteristically silent.

He sees fear.


End file.
